What is Wordle and why is the world obsessed?

A new game, Wordle, is taking Twitter by storm. It’s a word-search game that has a romantic origin story that could rival anything from Shakespeare.

The game was created by software engineer Josh Wardle for his partner, who he noticed had become too good at most word-search games. So, to keep her amused, he created a guessing game for just the two of them.

But after Wardle made the Web-based game available via his family’s WhatsApp group, and it proved popular, he decided to share it with the world.

This is not Wardle’s first creation. Formerly a software engineer for Reddit, he created two collaborative social experiments, called The Button and Place that both became phenomena on their own. Wordle is different, because it was meant just for him and his partner, Palak Shah, to kill time during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The game is different from a lot of word games because it can only be played once per day. The game has no ads or distracting banners, no windows or pop-ups asking for money.

The rules are simple to follow but the game is not easy to play (for most people). Each day, there’s a new five-letter word that must be guessed, and users have six chances to get the word right.

There are no clues except for the colour of each letter in the boxes. If you guess a word and all the letters are in grey, then the word is incorrect, leaving only five more chances to guess another word.

If you guess a word and there are letters in yellow, then the letters are in the word but are in the wrong position. And if letters are in green, then the letters are correct and in the correct position.

Sounds easy, right?

That the game can be played only once a day creates a feeling of scarcity, making people crave it more. And with every player getting the same word, it becomes a race between friends and colleagues to see who will guess the word first using the least numbers of tries. It can become like a war at times (World Wordle War?).

And those grey, green and yellow squares you’ve been seeing all over Twitter? Those are Wordle players sharing their wins (gloating?) and sometimes their shame at not finding the word.

The game also had its own problems: one user figured out the algorithm to the game and started sharing answers before most people could guess them, ruining the fun. Twitter quickly stepped in and shut down the Twitter account responsible.

A game that was conceived as a love note from a software engineer to his partner has become the newest way to connect with strangers on the Internet (and in a positive way). What’s not to like?  — © 2022 NewsCentral Media